We request partial funding for the 3rd National Meeting of the American Society for Matrix Biology (ASMB), to be held at the Nashville Convention Center, Nashville, TN on November 1-4 2006. The 3rd ASMB meeting builds on the success of the 2nd one, held in San Diego in November 2004, in which over 400 participants from diverse fields, in academia as well as companies, spent 4 days of intense discussion and exchange of ideas on the broad topic of matrix biology. We intend to expand on that success, hoping to attract at least 500 participants. To this end we have assembled a plenary program comprised of distinguished scientists from diverse areas that impinge directly or indirectly on matrix biology. The meeting will open with a Keynote Address by Dr. Harold L. Moses, a distinguished member of the Vanderbilt University faculty and founder of the Vanderbilt Cancer Center. He has made innumerable contributions to the understanding of a key signal molecule in matrix and tumor biology, transforming growth factor beta. The following 3 days will consist of 5 Plenary Sessions and 5 sets of 3 Concurrent Sessions, focused on the following integrated topics: Signaling and Development, Genetic Diseases, Tissue Engineering, Microbes and Matrix, Biomechanical Responses, Elastic Tissue, Stem Cells, Development, ECM Assembly, Glycoconjugates, Fibrosis, Proteoglycans, Metalloproteinases, Matrix Receptors, Neovascularization, Pathogenesis, Mass Spectrometry Applications, Bone, Basement Membranes, and Matrix Modulators. Sessions are designed to ensure that speakers from diverse fields will participate in the same session and promote cross- fertilization of their special knowledge. Concurrent Sessions will be moderated by an invited speaker, and both Plenary and Concurrent sessions will include platform presentations selected from abstract submissions The ASMB is a unique convocation of the diverse, specialized disciplines that have developed out of matrix biology. Unlike large society meetings, the ASMB meeting has a dominant theme, and unlike symposia it strives to encompass all permutations on this theme, including emerging issues, not-ready-for-prime-time topics, and exciting new areas of research. In particular this meeting will emphasize state of the art technologies that can answer questions pertinent to ECM biology and pathology that could not be tackled with existing methodologies. In summary, the National ASMB meeting is an exclusive opportunity for interested scientists to appreciate in a concentrated forum, the current status of a broad field, matrix biology, which would be essentially impossible to gather any other way. This is true not only for established investigators but also for young scientists and students, including minorities, on whose participation we place great emphasis. [unreadable] [unreadable] [unreadable]